Cyber Brief: Identity misuse, cloud access risks and IR gaps

Today’s cyber landscape continues to reinforce three core themes shaping organisational risk: identity misuse as a primary attack vector, cloud access errors leading to unintended exposure and growing concerns about incident response maturity across UK organisations. These issues highlight why identity governance, cloud discipline and operational readiness remain critical as threat activity accelerates toward year end.

Identity misuse rises as attackers exploit legitimate access pathways

Security analysts report a continued rise in attacks that rely on legitimate identity pathways rather than technical exploits. Instead of focusing on vulnerabilities, attackers are increasingly using compromised credentials, stolen tokens and misused delegated permissions to access systems while appearing legitimate within monitoring tools.
What stands out in recent cases is the subtlety. Threat actors are avoiding noisy privilege escalation and instead maintaining low privilege access while gradually expanding reach through inherited permissions, group nesting or overlooked service accounts. Once established, they quietly map environments, observe business processes and wait for operational windows where their activity blends with legitimate behaviour.
Because the activity resembles expected traffic patterns, traditional detection methods often fail to trigger alerts. Organisations with complex identity architectures or large numbers of dormant accounts are particularly vulnerable, as attackers exploit identities that sit outside normal behavioural models.

Why it matters
Identity misuse is harder to detect than traditional exploitation. Organisations should reduce privilege sprawl, enforce token binding, remove dormant accounts and monitor for behavioural anomalies within legitimate sessions.

Source
Identity security and threat behaviour assessments

Misconfigured cloud access continues to create silent exposure risks

Cloud security teams have observed an increase in misconfigured access pathways across storage, serverless components and API gateways. Many of these misconfigurations stem from rapid project timelines, inherited templates and unclear ownership of cloud resources. As a result, services intended for internal workflows have inadvertently been exposed to the internet or granted broader permissions than necessary.
Attackers routinely scan for such exposures. Once identified, they attempt to access stored data, escalate privilege through linked roles or leverage environment variables to pivot deeper into an organisation’s cloud estate. Misconfigurations often persist for months, allowing attackers to quietly explore systems before detection.
The issue is amplified during December release cycles when workloads are scaled upward, automation pipelines are adjusted and temporary access permissions are granted without strict policy enforcement.

Why it matters
Cloud misconfigurations remain one of the fastest, simplest pathways to compromise. Organisations should enforce automated configuration baselines, require peer review for permission changes and continuously monitor for public exposure.

Source
Cloud configuration review and exposure reporting

UK incident response reviews highlight gaps in readiness and escalation

Recent UK-focused incident response evaluations reveal that many organisations still lack clear escalation routes, tested response playbooks and unified communication approaches. While detection capabilities have improved, response coordination often breaks down when incidents require cross-team collaboration or rapid decision making.
Common issues include unclear ownership of critical systems, limited understanding of dependencies and inconsistent communication with operational teams. In several reviews, organisations detected problems early but were slow to respond due to uncertainty about who could authorise containment actions or communicate with external stakeholders.
With attackers increasingly favouring credential misuse and stealthy persistence, rapid escalation is essential. However, reviews indicate that many organisations rely on informal decision chains that do not scale during high-pressure situations.

Why it matters
Effective incident response requires preparation, clarity and rehearsal. Organisations should define decision authorities, test playbooks regularly and ensure communication protocols support rapid, structured action during an incident.

Source
UK incident response maturity and resilience assessments

Today’s Key Actions

1. Review identity permissions, remove dormant accounts and enforce behavioural monitoring.
2. Validate cloud access pathways and ensure configuration baselines are automated and enforced.
3. Strengthen incident response escalation routes and test cross-team communication plans.
4. Prioritise least privilege enforcement across cloud and on premises environments.
5. Update risk registers to reflect identity and cloud exposure patterns observed this month.

Secarma Insight

Today’s themes show that the most significant cyber risks rarely come from novel techniques. Instead, attackers succeed by exploiting gaps in identity governance, cloud configuration and response readiness. Organisations that reinforce these foundations gain resilience, reduce operational risk and put themselves in a stronger position going into the new year.

Get in touch with us to prioritise your next steps and strengthen your security posture.